Most multinationals already audit their Peruvian subsidiary. Internal audit visits on a rotation, SOX-style controls over payroll are tested every year, and the group code of conduct is certified by every employee. None of that tells a regional compliance officer whether the local entity would survive a visit from SUNAFIL, Peru’s national labor inspection authority. The gap is not a question of rigor. It is a question of reference point: group audits test the controls the group designed, while an employment audit tests the obligations Peruvian law imposes, many of which have no equivalent in the parent’s home jurisdiction.
This article explains how a Peruvian employment audit is structured, what it actually examines, how findings should be rated and how the exercise turns into a remediation plan that regional HR and legal teams can own. It sits within our broader guide to employment compliance in Peru.
Why a group audit misses local exposure
Global audit programs are built around a control mindset: is there an approval, a reconciliation, a segregation of duties? That mindset is valuable, and it transfers well to employment. But the object of the test is different. A Peruvian inspector will not ask whether payroll changes were approved by two people. The inspector will ask whether the company has a registered set of internal work rules if it has more than 100 employees, whether the sexual harassment intervention committee exists and has met, whether the health and safety committee or supervisor is in place, whether statutory benefits were calculated on the right base and whether attendance records exist for every worker subject to working-time limits.
These obligations are statutory, not policy-based. A group policy can be silent on them and the entity will still be liable. Conversely, a group policy can be stricter than local law and still fail to satisfy a formal Peruvian requirement, such as filing a document with the labor authority or delivering it to employees within a set period.
Key point
The question an employment audit answers is not “are our controls operating?” but “if SUNAFIL requested the file tomorrow, what would it find, and what would it cost?”
Scope: what a Peruvian employment audit covers
A well-scoped audit covers the full employment lifecycle and the compliance infrastructure around it. The table below shows the core areas and the evidence typically tested.
| Area | What is tested | Typical evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Hiring and contracts | Correct use of fixed-term contracts, probation, part-time, foreign-worker limits | Contracts, objective-cause clauses, filings |
| Pay and benefits | Computable pay, CTS, gratificaciones, overtime, vacation records | Payroll registers, payslips, deposit proofs |
| Working time | Attendance control, overtime authorization, exempt roles | Attendance logs, schedules, designations |
| Compliance infrastructure | Internal work rules, harassment framework, health and safety system | Filed rules, committee minutes, trainings, registers |
| Contractors | Outsourcing and staffing arrangements, contractor safety verification | Service agreements, contractor payroll evidence |
CTS is a severance fund the employer deposits twice a year into a bank account in the employee’s name; gratificaciones are two statutory bonuses paid in July and December. Both are frequent sources of recalculation findings because the computable base depends on how variable pay is classified. A practical starting point for the document list is our note on the documents SUNAFIL can request: if the audit team can assemble that file quickly and it holds up, the entity is in reasonable shape.
Sampling rather than full review
For entities with a meaningful headcount, the audit samples. A typical approach selects employees across contract types, sites, pay structures and tenure bands, then recalculates benefits and traces records for that sample. Where a pattern appears, the sample is expanded to size the issue. Structural documents (internal work rules, committee minutes, the annual risk assessment) are reviewed in full.
The audit in five phases
- Scoping and data request. Agree entities, sites, headcount, contractors in scope, the reference period and the reporting format. Issue a single consolidated information request rather than drip-feeding questions.
- Document review and recalculation. Contracts, payroll and records are tested against Peruvian law. Payroll recalculations are done independently of the payroll provider’s own logic.
- Interviews and walkthroughs. HR, payroll, site managers and, where relevant, the committees are interviewed to understand how processes work in practice. Many findings emerge here: a schedule nobody records, a supervisor who approves overtime informally.
- Findings matrix. Each gap is documented with the legal basis, the facts, the population affected, a risk rating and a recommended corrective action.
- Remediation plan and follow-up. Findings are converted into actions with owners and dates, and closure is verified.
Illustrative scenario
Illustrative scenario: a European manufacturer with 140 employees in Lima runs a group internal audit every two years with clean results. An employment audit finds that the company crossed the 100-employee threshold eighteen months earlier but never filed internal work rules, that the harassment committee was formed but has no worker representatives elected, and that overtime for warehouse staff is paid but never authorized in writing. None of these appeared in the group audit because none of them is a group control.
Rating findings: exposure, not just severity
A common weakness of audit reports is a flat list of issues. Regional leadership needs to know which gaps matter. A useful rating combines three dimensions:
- Administrative exposure. Peruvian inspection law classifies infringements as minor, serious and very serious. Under Law 28806, the General Labor Inspection Law, the statutory caps are 50, 100 and 200 UIT per infringement respectively, and the total for all infringements detected cannot exceed 300 UIT. The UIT is a tax reference unit set annually; for 2026 it is S/ 5,500. The actual fine within the schedule depends on the severity, the company size and the number of workers affected.
- Claims exposure. Some findings create individual liabilities that no inspection is needed to trigger: unpaid benefits, reclassified contracts, reinstatement risk. These belong in a separate column because they may need provisioning. Our article on identifying and sizing employment liabilities sets out how to quantify them.
- Ease of cure. A missing document can often be fixed in weeks; a misclassified pay component affecting several years of benefits cannot.
Legal note
Under the inspection regulations, if the company cures an infringement before SUNAFIL issues the infringement report, the proposed fine for the infringements actually cured is reduced by 90%. The benefit is lost if the company later contests those infringements. Further reductions exist at later stages. This is why curable findings should be closed before, not after, an inspection starts.
From findings to a remediation plan
The audit is only as useful as the plan that follows it. For multinationals, the remediation plan should look like any other control-deficiency tracker the group already uses, so that it is visible to regional compliance and, where relevant, to the audit committee.
Each action should state the finding reference, the corrective step, the owner (a named role, not a department), the deadline, the evidence that proves closure and the verifier. For recurring obligations such as quarterly safety trainings or annual harassment-risk evaluations, the plan should hand over to the entity’s compliance calendar; our annual employment compliance calendar for Peru shows how to structure those recurring dates.
The remediation plan is also the natural bridge to a permanent program. An audit is a snapshot; a program keeps the picture current. The components of that program are covered in building an employment compliance program.
Checklist before commissioning an audit
- Confirm the headcount by entity and site, and whether any statutory thresholds (20 or more workers, more than 100 workers) have been crossed.
- Decide whether contractors and staffing agencies are in scope.
- Define the reference period and the sample logic.
- Agree who receives the report and how it will be stored.
- Align the rating scale with the group’s risk taxonomy so findings can be escalated consistently.
- Identify who will own remediation locally before fieldwork begins.
Common mistakes
Auditing against the group policy instead of the law. The group anti-harassment policy may be excellent and still omit the Peruvian committee, the statutory deadlines and the reports to the labor ministry.
Letting the payroll provider audit itself. Recalculations should be independent. Where payroll is run by a third party, the provider can supply the data, but the test should be performed by someone else.
Treating the report as the deliverable. A report without owners and deadlines tends to be filed and forgotten until the next inspection reproduces the same findings.
Ignoring contractors. Principal companies have their own duties in relation to outsourced personnel, including verifying contractors’ compliance with health and safety rules. Excluding contractors from scope leaves a blind spot.
Watch out
Starting remediation only after an inspection order arrives reduces options. The largest fine reduction is available only before the infringement report is issued, and some gaps, such as years of miscalculated benefits, cannot be cured quickly.
Consequences of not auditing
The direct consequence is administrative: fines calculated per infringement and per worker affected, publication of inspection results (which the law allows SUNAFIL to disclose), and orders to comply within a set period. The indirect consequences are often larger for a multinational: provisioning surprises at year-end, findings surfacing in due diligence during a group reorganization, and employee claims that build on the same facts an audit would have revealed.
Bottom line
An employment audit in Peru is the local complement to the group’s control framework, not a duplicate of it. It tests statutory obligations the group audit does not reach, rates gaps by what they would actually cost, and gives the regional team a remediation plan it can track. The right moment to run one is before a threshold is crossed, before a transaction and, above all, before an inspector asks for the file. Our employment audit service is designed around that sequence.